Gild the Lily
by Captain Serious
Summary: When an FDNY Paramedic is murdered, Detective Robert Goren takes the case too personally as he finds himself growing attached to the fallen medics partner. As unflattering details emerge, Goren battles between doing what's ethically right or burying evidence to protect the woman who let him into her dark, twisty, and vulnerable world.
1. Chapter 1

Winter in Manhattan had once been a season Beth enjoyed. As a little girl, she could remember spending hours walking the busy Upper East Side streets with her mother, snow crunching beneath her boots as she peered into the windows at Tiffany's and eyeing all the beautiful sparkling diamonds. Her mother had once told her that if Beth were to make the right choices in life, one day would she not only own one Tiffany necklace, but several. And, shopping at Barneys wouldn't be a dream but rather her reality.

Having grown up in the dominate Irish working class neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen in the Manhattan borough, Beth most certainty dreamed of the day where she would live on Park Avenue and marry an investment banker enjoying the simple life of drinking tea in the afternoon with other wealthy wives and walk the snowy streets with her two or three Yorkshire Terriers hand in hand with her husband at night.

However, nearly two decade after she had first envisioned those dreams, Beth had never made them her reality. Now, at twenty-eight, she had followed the footsteps of her father and brothers, working her ass off in school and eventually getting a job with the Fire Department of New York as a paramedic at EMS Station 7. Although she had never found her way out of Hell's Kitchen, was seemingly content with where life had brought her.

Now seasoned as an FDNY Medic, Beth sat in the passenger seat in the cab of the ambulance as she fiddled with the volume of the radio; turning it down as she no longer wished to listen to bickering between one medic unit and the dispatcher. It had been going on for the last ten minutes and it took nearly every ounce of self-control she had not to pick up the mike and tell them both to shut and grow up. Knowing it was generally frowned upon but done often, Beth grabbed a Marlboro Light and a lighter from the stash in the glove compartment and lit up as she waited for Brandon, her partner of the last three years. He had promised he would only be gone for five minutes, ten minutes ago.

A blast of cold air hit Beth like a thousand knives to the face as she rolled down the window and blew out a large cloud of smoke. It had been an uneventful shift so far, only a few medical calls, a fire which they had been called off of and a stabbing which the rival Medic Unit 33 had beaten them to. For early December, this was unusual as she and Brandon would run between five to ten "man down" calls as the homeless would be found unconscious and needing transport for hypothermia.

Midway through her cigarette, the driver door opened and Brandon slid into the seat handing off a fresh cup of hot coffee to his partner. Beth flicked her ashes and accepted the coffee appreciatively.

"The fuck took you so long?"

Beth's New York accent was thick. Brandon often made fun of it, mimicking her as he had grown up in the Midwest.

"I can't help it that chicks dig guys in uniform." He joked.

Beth had found it rather odd that he had returned without a coffee as it was midnight and they were both running out of steam. He seemed rather hyped up and chipper leaving her to assume he had chugged it on his way back from the coffee cart on the corner three blocks away. With the amount of time it took him, she was thankful they hadn't been sent out on a run. She realized she had jinxed them. As soon as she was about to open her mouth and tell him those exact words when their radio tuned.

"_Medic Unit-24."_

"Medic Unit-24, go 'head dispatch." Beth answered.

The female voice of the dispatcher, who Beth knew as Ashley from their days in high school, filled the small space of the ambulance cabin.

"_Reports of a man down on 10__th__ Avenue and West 48__th__ Street by the Clinton Community Garden. Pedestrian called it in, status of patient is unknown, law enforcement is en route. 10__th__ Avenue and West 48__th__ Street, law enforcement is en route."_

"10-4, Medic 24 is en route; 5 minutes out."

Tossing her cigarette out the window, Beth rolled up the window and put her seatbelt on as Brandon turned on the lights and sirens, pulling away from the curb. They would make a few extra circles around the block to ensure NYPD would arrive first and secure the scene and true to her word, they pulled up no more than five minutes later.

The once pitch black streets were illuminated with the mixture of flashing blue and white lights, and the flash of their red ones made the scene even brighter. Stepping out of the cab, Beth blew into her cupped hands having forgotten her gloves back at the station and grabbed her jump bag from the back, slinging it over her shoulder, Beth her partner and two officers who crowded around a man lying down in the middle of the sidewalk. Without an assessment, Beth and Brandon and the cops already knew what they were dealing with. The white, frothy sputum coming from the man's mouth indicated a possible opiate overdose.

Dropping her jump bag, Beth knelt down, and placed two fingers on man's carotid artery. There was a pulse, but it was weak and thready. She took his pulse and counted his breaths.

"Sir," Beth called out, accepting the penlight Brandon handed her. "Sir, FDNY, can you hear me?"

Lifting his eyelids and shining her light, Beth made note of his pupils. They were pinpoint and unresponsive to light.

Standing back up, Beth nodded towards her partner. "Get the stretcher; let's start and IV and push 2mg of Narcan."

It was Beth's job to work on the patients that night, and as she tried her best to find a usable vein (his arms were full of track marks) Brandon drew 2mgs of Narcan into a syringe. As she was getting ready to push the drug used to reverse an opiate overdose, the two cops and Brandon stood ready for the response they were expecting when the drug hit his bloodstream.

Slowly and carefully, Beth pushed the drug through the IV and as soon as she finished quickly moved back. Sure enough, not even two minutes later, their unconscious male was no loner unconscious and immediately jumped to his feet.

"You fuckin' bitch!" Spat the addict. "Just ruined my high, I spent 20 bucks on that shit."

Beth was used to the verbal abuse; early in her career she hated being called every word from bitch to cunt but she learned to let it roll off her back especially when it came from the mouth of a junkie.

The two cops tried to calm him down but all he did was spit another, "Fuck you, pigs."

Before he had a chance to rip his IV out and set out on another quest to score more drugs, Beth stopped him. "Let us take you to Roosevelt to get checked out. You'll have a bed to sleep in for the night and get a decent meal."

She was always good at talking certain people down. Although he stayed silent for several minutes, their unknown patient nodded. "Alright. I'm John."

"Okay, John, why don't you hop on the cot so we can get you in the ambulance and I get a set of vitals you." Beth pointed to the stretcher as Brandon removed the backboard from it. John did what he was told.

Rolling the cot to the open back doors of the ambulance, Beth and Brandon gave each other a look that read they knew they would be running overdoses for the rest of the night. Brandon was in position to slid and lock the stretcher into the back when the sound of gun shots rang out.

The scene went from clam to chaos in a matter of seconds. The two officers took cover from the opposite side of their squad cars and returned fire as Beth dropped to her stomach. John had other ideas as he unbuckled himself from the cot and took off running. Reaching for the portable radio attached to the shoulder of her heavy jacket, Beth called out to dispatch desperately.

"We have shots fired! Shots fired at West 48th street and 10th Avenue!"

When the sound of gun shots stopped, Beth looked over to her partner, who lay on his back. She noticed he was holding his stomach. Dashing over to Brandon, Beth looked down at his bloodied, shaking hands. It had taken her several minutes to realize what happened. Brandon had been shot. When her training finally kicked in, Beth called out to the officers and told them what to grab from the ambulance.

"Mayday, mayday." Beth tried to hide the shaking in her voice as she forcefully spoke. "Paramedic down. I repeat, paramedic down."

In a matter of minutes, Beth had cut through Brandon's jacket and shirt, applied pressure to the bullet wounds she found in his side and abdomen, had him boarded with an oxygen mask and en route to Roosevelt hospital. As she stayed in the back to attend to her partner, one of the officers at the scene drove the ambulance as there was no time to wait for another unit.

Beth worked quickly and desperately to do what she could to save his life, but the blood loss was far too great and he quickly decompensated into shock. She was stained with his blood as was the ambulance. Watching the cardiac monitor, Beth hopped up on to the cot, straddling Brandon as she began chest compressions the second his rhythm went asystole.

"Don't you quit now on me, Brandon!" She yelled, feeling his ribs crack and break beneath her bare hands. "Fuck! C'mon, Brandon!"

Beth couldn't take her eyes off the cardiac monitor, the sound of the flatline echoing louder than the sirens that blasted outside of the ambulance. When they pulled up into the bay at the Emergency Room, a trauma team was waiting and opened the doors. Not stopping her chest compressions, the trauma team managed to get the heavy cot out of the ambulance with both Brandon and Beth and raced him to the ready trauma room for assessment.

Beth shouted out Brandon's history which she knew by heart and refused to accept the fact of reality.

He was gone.

The amount of blood he had lost was too great and he had been without a pulse for too long.

"Why aren't you intubating him?" Beth cried out, unwilling to get off the cot and stop compressions.

A quiet trauma nurse, who was beyond sympathetic, grabbed Beth's wrists stopping her. With tears flowing down her face, Beth let out of a cry of grief and anger. She wanted to slap Brandon for quitting on her but the sight of his ashen skin, blue lips and lifeless face stopped her. Two other medic who had been in the emergency room on another call entered the room somberly and eased their sister off the cot. Her legs were beyond shaky; she was amazed she could stand as they led her to the hall to where she collapsed to the floor and bashed her fist against the floor several times.

Her adrenaline was running at such a high rate that Beth hadn't noticed she too had been hit by a bullet. Only, it had been stopped by the bulletproof vest she just so happen to put on six hours ago when their shift had begun. In silence and shock, Beth sat on the floor with her back pressed up against the wall. She only looked up when she noticed two pairs of legs in her eyesight. She knew who they were from NYPD.

"Beth?"

She met the eyes of a female detective who looked at Beth with a sadden expression. Her voice was light. "I'm Detective Eames and this is my partner Detective Goren we're from Major Case Squad and we'd like to speak with you about what happened tonight. We're very sorry for the loss of your partner."

Reaching out a hand, Detective Robert Goren grabbed it helping the young redheaded woman to her feet. There were no words that could be exchanged between the three as Alex Eames placed her hand on the small of Beth's back and led her out to a waiting car to take her to the station.


	2. Chapter 2

Beth paced the well-lit interview room with her arms crossed over her chest. Occasionally she would stop and wipe a tear off her cheek, trying her best to hold her emotions in check as she played the last few hours over and over in her spinning mind. Her stomach was in knots, her intestines knotting tighter with each passing minute as she thought about what exactly to say to Brandon's parents when they would surely call her. There was nothing she could say, Beth told her herself, she obviously hadn't done her best work to save his life or else he would be in a bed recovering from surgery rather than on a cold, metal slab at the Medical Examiner's office.

The two detectives had left Beth alone for several minutes as they strategized from the room on the other side of the one way mirror. Beth hated the feeling of knowing they were watching her. It made her feel like a zoo animal. Checking the time on the watch she always wore on her left wrist, the sight of the bloodstained white wristband made her stomach even sicker, leaving her more disgusted knowing she was still wearing the uniform which too was stained with the blood of her partner.

"How do we do this?" Eames turned her back from the window unable to continue to watch Beth in her distressed emotional state.

Goren, however, continued to observe Beth, trying to learn everything he could about her from her body language. With his head cocked to the side, he picked up on something more than grief but he couldn't exactly put his finger on it. Nervousness, perhaps.

"She may not be one of our own but she is still a sister in uniform." Captain Hannah proceeded. "We treat this no differently as if he were an officer. The FD is looking for answers and they deserve them. Catch the spineless bastard who gunned down a defenseless paramedic."

Leaving the observation room, Joseph Hannah returned to his office where he would call both the Fire Commissioner and head of Emergency Medical Services to extend his own condolences as well as the condolences of One PP.

Emotions from her own personal tragedy of losing her husband in the line of duty were stirred deep inside Eames. She knew how difficult it would be to sit and question Beth McFadden without causing more turmoil then she was already feeling.

"I'll go find her clothes to wear before we collect her uniform." Alex scratched a non-existent itch on the side of her mouth before heading for the day. "You start in the interview."

Goren waited several seconds after Eames left room as he tried to find the courage to go in there and confront her with questions he knew were going to be personal and uneasy. He needed to know everything and until they could zero in on a suspect, she was the only source that could give them in the information they needed.

Grabbing a cup of coffee, Goren entered the interview room almost startling Beth. She looked at him apathetically, like a deer in headlights. He took mental note of her big doe eyes; they were the clearest, brightest shade of blue he had ever seen still despite her several hours of crying.

"I brought you a cup of coffee." Goren gently placed the paper cup on the metal table opposite to where he dropped his leather blinder in the same placid manner.

Before she took a seat, Beth, dropped her arms to her side before more tears flowed down her red and raw cheeks. "He was supposed to take this shift off. It's…it's his girlfriend's birthday. I was selfish and talked him out of calling out because I didn't want to work with another partner. We know—knew—each other so well, we were always on the same beat; thought the same things."

To gain her trust and get her to calm down, Goren knew now was the time to sympathize even though he knew exactly where she was coming from. He felt the same about Eames. "It's not selfish to want to work with your partner. If the two of you aren't on the same page, that's how mistakes are made."

Beth pulled the chair away from the table where she took a seat and pulled one knee up to her chest. The latter part of his statement seemed to strike a nerve in her that Goren didn't mean or think he would hit.

"I didn't make a mistake. I did everything by the book and by protocol and he still died."

"I'm not saying you made a mistake." He made note of what he took to be her defense mechanism. He guessed she was the best at what she did and she knew it.

Beth took the cup of coffee between her hands. She hadn't noticed she was still shaking until she saw the ripples at the surface of the black coffee. "How am I supposed to look Amanda in the face? She'll blame me for what happened…she blames me for everything."

He made another note. That was a topic for another time. He needed her to be clear minded and it was obvious Brandon's personal life was something that made Beth rather cross.

"Why don't you take me through everything that happened since the start of your shift." Goren looked up at Beth from his notes. "No detail is too small."

Beth took a deep breath as she closed her eyes as pinched the bridge of her nose. Those details seemed lifetimes ago and she wracked her brain to make sure she could get everything right.

Their shift had started at 7pm where Beth met Brandon in the ambulance bay as they began checking their equipment. Making sure the backboard was where it should be, the cardiac monitors were working, AED had working batteries, jump bags were fully supplied.

"Was he acting out of the ordinary?"

"My partner is dead!" Beth outburst. "Why are you busy sitting here asking me about whether he was acting _out of the ordinary _when you should be out there looking for the son-of-a-bitch who shot at us?"

Goren ignored it. He was used to.

Letting her calm down, he switched to another topic. "When you arrived at the scene for the call you responded to, did anything seem…odd? Out of place; any people around?"

"Not that I saw." Beth took a sip of the coffee. "It was _your_ guys who were supposed to clear the scene and keep it cleared while we worked."

"Do you suffer from anxiety issues, Miss. McFadden?"

Robert had noticed the open sores on her fingers around her nail beds from where she picked at the skin and how she was unable to sit still without bouncing her legs or moving in the chair.

"No, I don't. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Perhaps you were anxious at the scene and it caused you to miss something that compromised scene safety or patient care?"

"I told you! There was no one else that I saw at the scene and I did not screw up trying to save Brandon's life. I didn't kill him…" Beth trailed off. "I didn't kill him."

Goren didn't know who she was trying to convince that she made no mistake. Him or herself?

The interview was interrupted when Eames entered the room with an arm full of sweatpants, a sweatshirt and an assortment of bags to bag her belongings for evidence. "I'll make this quick, Beth."

Closing his binder, Goren left the room to give the woman a little privacy so she could strip from her blood soaked clothing. Instead of going back to his computer to pull up anything he could find on Beth McFadden, he found himself back in the observation room watching her closely. May be she would confined in Eames and give what they needed up to her. At first it was nonsense information; Eames asked Beth about her career as she unbuttoned her blue uniform shirt and put in an evidence bag. It was no information that he wouldn't be able to figure out on his own from asking around the FD.

He did, however watch closely as Beth carefully pulled the Velcro straps of her bulletproof vest which would be one key piece of evidence as it held the bullet from the gun used in the shooting. The white wife beater Beth wore under the vest was tight and extenuated her ample assets. Time seemed to slow for Goren as Beth unbuckled her duty belt, unbuttoned and pulled down the zipper of her navy Dickies. When she shimmied the tight fabric off her wide, child baring hips to reveal white, bikini, cotton panties was when he had to turn away. Her measurements weren't something he would be able to find on any database. Heading back to his desk, Goren carelessly tossed his suite jacket over his chair before sitting down to begin digging into the background of Beth McFadden.

After all her clothes were bagged and tagged, Eames and Beth exited the interview room where Beth was greeted by a swarm of off duty firefighters and other EMS members to take her home. Beth refused to make eye contact with Robert Goren as she passed his desk leaving him to realize Beth McFadden was about to make not only his job, but his life more difficult than it already was.


	3. Chapter 3

"What did you find on the two medics?" Joseph Hannah pulled up a chair beside Eames desk and rested his elbows on the stacks of files. He was feeling the pressure from the Fire Department, the press and from within him to get this case solved as quickly as possible. The one thing he feared was letting the case go cold.

Eames tucked her hair behind her ear as she pulled up a government database on her computer and flipped to a page in her notepad which she had been scribbling on. "Nothing. Brandon Meyers has no priors, grew up in Ohio and moved to New York after 9/11 to join the fire service. His application was rejected for the fire academy for an undocumented reason where; he obtained his paramedic license eight years and lives alone in an apartment in Hell's Kitchen. He did have one complaint filed against him three years before he was partnered with Beth from a family member of a patient who said he seemed high or intoxicated at call he responded to…never suspended or given a drug test following the complaint."

"What did the ME have to say?"

"He was shot twice, once in left side; bullet lodged in his kidney and the bullet that went through his abdomen punctured his aorta. Toxicology report should be ready within the next couple of hours. Rodgers did say she found mentholated residue under his fingernails and above his upper lip, just under his nose."

Goren could see the look of confusion on his Captains face and elaborated on the possible reason for the mentholated residue. "Some medics will often put Vick's Vapor Rub on their upper lip during calls to mask smells that could make them sick."

Hannah furrowed his eyebrows, grabbing the back of his neck. "So that leads us nowhere. What about the ballistics report on the bullets pulled from Meyer's and McFadden's vest?"

"Still waiting to hear back but we do know the bullets are 9m." Eames was just as frustrated that it was taking as long as it was to get the information. They felt like sitting ducks. "Nothing came up from the officers who canvased the area and Beth isn't being very cooperative."

"The funeral is tomorrow. Why don't you two pay Beth a visit at her house and try again before she decides to crawl to the bottom of a bottle of whiskey and give his apartment another sweep to make sure we didn't miss anything."

Without having to be asked twice, both Goren and Eames stood up from their desks, grabbed their jackets and headed out to Hell's Kitchen. At Brandon's apartment, there didn't seem to be much for Goren and Eames to search though again. His girlfriend had turned over his laptop, the several prescription bottles they had found were turned over to the Medical Examiner and his bills and bank statements had been collected.

"I don't think we're going to get much from here." Eames was monotone as she looked under the sink for possibly more pills or drugs they had missed over their first search.

Brandon seemed to live well in his means; the only two things of value he seemed to have been his Apple laptop and his flat screen television. Both of which had been found at the house along with fifty dollars in cash that had been sitting on the kitchen countertop leaving burglary out as a motive. Goren had been found himself going through the laundry basket sitting on the bed as Eames entered the bedroom and began digging in the nightstand again.

"You interviewed his girlfriend, correct?" Goren asked his partner.

Eames drew her attention away from the nightstand drawer which contained a varied supply of condoms, lubes and a pair of red fuzzy handcuffs. "Yeah, why?"

Goren held up a clean, black v-neck shirt that he had found in the laundry basket along with a pair of dark blue jeans.

"Those don't look like they would fit her."

"What size would you say Beth is?" Goren looked at the tag waiting for his female partner's opinion.

Eames shrugged her shoulders and gave her best educated guess.

"Size fourteen jeans and a large t-shirt; perhaps they were more than just work partners."

Simultaneously, both their cellphones buzzed with text messages from the ballistics division back at the station. Deciding to head back and get the report and confront Beth later, the pair headed back to One PP where they found a sudden break in their case.

"You found the gun?" Eames put on a pair of latex gloves before she picked up the Glock that was lying on a table lined with parchment paper. Forensics was on their way to dust the piece for prints.

"It was brought it about an hour ago by officers who found it stashed in a bush three blocks from the scene. I wanted to match the bullets before I told you to not get your hopes up. Sure enough, the bullets that hit Brandon and Beth were shot from that gun." The lab tech moved out of the way to allow Goren to look under the microscope. The bullet from Beth's vest was viable enough to allow comparison.

"This is a NYPD issued Glock. Did you run the serial number yet?" Eames asked. The same gun that she held in her hands sat in the holster she wore on her hip.

The tech shook his head. "I was told not to take it apart until it was dusted."

"A paramedic is dead and the gun used to kill him is NYPD issued." Goren put on a set of gloves and moved over to disassemble the gun where he wrote down the number. "We don't have time to wait."

Handing the piece of paper over to Eames, Goren discarded his gloves. "You run the number. I'm going to talk to Beth; I have a feeling she knows more than she's leading on. Call me the second you know something."

Hell's Kitchen had once been home to the working class with primarily Irish influence and roots. For three decades, it had been run by the Westies, a violent Irish-American gang that had allied themselves with the Gambino Crime Family which fell completely in the mid-1980's ending the Westies reign of terror. Ever since, Hell's Kitchen had been on a rise, now housing young actors and pro-athletes but it still housed those who had grown up in the area. While the Irish-American presence was still well known (that caused often difficulties for police as the Irish were/are notorious for not speaking to them) it was becoming clear that the area had become more and more diverse.

Beth lived by herself in a one-bedroom walk up not far from the apartment she had grown up in. Goren put his binder under his arm as he hurryingly dashed up the steps wanted to get inside and away from the cold. Goren knew she was home; her black Cavalier was parked at the curb. He buzzed Beth's apartment and to his surprise, she buzzed him in without asking who it was. He would be sure to make a comment on the importance of asking who was outside before letting someone into the building. When he reached the third floor, he found Beth standing in the doorway of her apartment with her back resting against the doorframe.

She was would have been happier to see his partner as his way of questioning seemed odd and unnecessary to Beth. "We meet again, Detective Goren."

"Please, call me Bobby." He answered. Getting on a personal level with her was a way he knew he could get her to open up to him.

The welcoming scents of lavender and vanilla wafted under the nostrils of Goren as he took a step into her small, yet comfortable living space. He took in his surroundings; she lived rather simply. The walls were painted a pale shade of yellow with hints of blue and green. The black curtains which hung in front of all the windows were drawn to a close omitting all natural sunlight leaving the room to be lit by the table lamps and fixtures that hung from the ceiling.

"So, _Bobby_," Beth breathed out as she led Goren down the small hall to the back of the apartment where the kitchenette was. "What do I owe the pleasure?"

He stopped midway in the hallway to admire the framed photos Beth had hanging on the walls. Most were of family and friends and there were a few documenting her career with the FDNY. One in particular that stuck out to him, Beth stood in her dress uniform between her parents holding a plaque which she had earned as being named Paramedic of the Year the previous year.

Beth knew the answer; he was there to ask her more questions. He was pleased to see she was far more emotionally stable than she had the other night at the station.

"Would you like coffee?" She politely asked.

Goren nodded and answered with a 'please' and a thank you' as he continued to admire the photographs. "You were a firefighter?"

Beth turned on the burner on the stove to heat water in the tea kettle. With the limited kitchen space, she had nixed the idea of a bulky coffee maker and found indulgence in a practical French Press. Beth nodded, not wanting to go into the details of her time on the fire side of her career. They were far from anything good and it had taken many years before she could attempt to get over what happened during her service. When Goren noticed her slight shut down, two photos gave him his answer as to why.

"You were _there." _

Grabbing two clean cups, Beth poured the black coffee into them and took a seat at the small, black round table that only had two chairs.

"I had graduated from the academy just months before it happened and I was excited to have been placed on Engine 54. Pride of Midtown, you know? We were the hardest hit station; lost fifteen. After 9/11 it was hard for me to get back on the engine and I only lasted a year before I found my true calling in EMS."

Goren took a seat across from Beth at the table and set aside his binder before adding cream and sugar to the best cup of coffee he had had in weeks. Reaching into the deep pockets of his coat which he had draped on the back of the chair, he handed over the one memento that had been the hardest for Beth to turn over.

Her badge.

"I thought you would want that for the funeral tomorrow."

Beth took the badge in her hand and ran her fingers over the engraved Star of Life. When she looked up to him, tears were welling in the corners of her eyes. "Thank you."

Looking over the Beth's shoulder to the kitchen counter, Goren noticed the plethora of prescription pills bottles that littered the small space. He thought those had to be one of the reasons for her far more relaxed mood.

"I'm going to ask you some difficult questions and I need you to be honest with me if we're going to catch whoever killed Brandon." He wasn't sure if he should bring up the fact they had found the weapon used.

She nodded, urging him to go on.

"You were…you had a, a, sexual relationship with Brandon, didn't you?"

Beth let out a throaty laugh. "You must be joking. I'm partnered with a male and suddenly the first conclusion that you come to is that we were fucking on the side? What about you, Detective Goren, I notice no ring on your finger…are you screwing around with your partner?"

"We found female clothing at his apartment that matches the exact size of the uniform pants and shirt we collected from you. Are we going to find your DNA on his bed sheets?"

Beth sat back in the chair and closed her eyes while shaking her head.

Goren's tone was firm. "Don't lie to me, Beth."

"No, I wasn't sleeping with him." Beth assured.

"Then why were your clothes at his apartment?" Goren cocked his head to the side. "What happened, Beth? Were you jealous? Jealous of seeing him happy with another woman and that jealously seethed so hot in your veins that you decided if you couldn't have him, no one could? You said it yourself, Amanda blames you for everything."

"We were not sleeping together. I stayed over at his apartment one night after we had gone out and had too much to drink. I changed into my uniform at his place before heading to work and I must have forgotten my clothes there."

"That's not true." Goren stated.

Beth stood up from the table and once again began pacing. "You're lying to me Beth. Everyone that I spoke to said Brandon didn't drink; he was in AA and on a high dose of anti-depressants. You and I both know the consequences of mixing alcohol and SSRI's."

Wiping the eyeliner tears from her face, Beth could feel a panic attack coming on. "You need to leave. Please, get out of here."

Goren decided it was best to respect her plead. Standing to his feet, he grabbed his coat and binder before heading back out into the cold December air. Upstairs in her apartment, Beth had collapsed on her sofa in uncontrollable tears as awful flashbacks toyed in her mind, only bringing the anger and fear she thought she had buried back to the surface.


	4. Chapter 4

Beth stood behind Brandon's parents as they sat. His father rubbed the tensioned shoulder of his mother as she sobbed uncontrollably into her leather gloves as the American flag that had draped his casket was folded and handed to her by the Fire Commissioner. Brandon's helmet sat in his father's lap. She was numb inside, Beth, and that was thanks to the double dosage of anti-anxiety and anti-depressants she had taken along with the three shots of whiskey she slammed in her car before walking into the cemetery where her partner was being laid to rest. Beth was filled with an unimaginable amount of guilt. She had been shot in the back which would have killed her instantly had she not been wearing that vest. Before their shift had started, Brandon had laughed at Beth for putting it on after she nearly begged him to do the same.

Listening to the cries of Brandon's mother would have put Beth over the edge had she not been as doped up as she was and it was painfully obvious to several of her EMS and fire brothers how drugged out of her mind she was. They didn't necessarily blame her; they all had their own ways of coping with the job and while others turned to healthy path of weekly therapy, there were those who enjoyed indulging in the world of pharmaceuticals and alcohol. It was cheaper.

As Brandon's casket was lowered into the ground, Beth closed her eyes and bowed her head as she couldn't come to terms with the fact she'd no longer hear his voice, laugh at his jokes or drag him out of bars at three in the morning. They had been a dysfunctional pair and everyone knew it but everything they had done wrong that would be considered rather unethical was gladly swept under the rug as they had more life saves than any other medics on the FDNY. Brandon had been admired by countless teenagers, who fought their way through medic school, hoping to one day be only half the paramedic he had been. Not to mention all the people who were still up and walking around because they had been lucky enough to have Brandon and Beth respond to their 9-11 call.

Beth only opened her eyes and looked up when she felt a hand on her own shoulder. Kelly Daniels (one of the few other females Beth worked with) offered a light, reassuring squeeze before whispering into her ear.

"You know we're all here for you. We love you."

Beth gave her a nod as she couldn't find any words to say. Kelly wiped the single tear that managed to sneak its way out of Beth's eye as the Priest concluded the service. Snow had begun to fall halfway through the service and as the light snowflakes fell onto the ground, Beth realized she would never feel the same way about the season of winter again. Instead of seeing the innocence of the white fluffy powder covering the ground, Beth saw it stained with the spilt blood of Brandon. As she took a deep breath, the cold air stung her lungs. She looked forward to heading to the bar and warming her body with several shots of Jameson. Putting her hands into the pockets of her wool department pea-coat, Beth managed to force a slight smile as her brothers gathered around her to give condolences. She could feel a set of eyes burning a hole into the back of her head and when she turned around to see who was staring at her, Beth wished she hadn't.

Standing in his own dress uniform, he nonchalantly held up his right hand with his index finger and thumb resembling a gun.

In interrogation room one sat a patrol officer with a look of unhappiness on her face. She had been brought in for questioning as she attempted to hail a cab to bring her to the bar/restaurant where she had dinner plans with her girlfriends. Eames entered the room first with Goren behind her as they each took a seat on the opposite side of the table and opening the appropriate folders.

"Do you recognize this gun?" Goren pulled a photo of the Glock out from his binder and placed it in front of Officer Michelle Morrow.

"Yeah, that's my Glock." Her Boston accent was demanding.

Without another word, Eames tossed the autopsy photo of Brandon Meyers beside the photo of the weapon she had admitted to being hers. "It was used to kill a paramedic the other night. Where were you Wednesday night between the hours of ten pm and one am?"

The color from Michelle's face drained at the sight of Brandon's photo and the revelation of her gun being used to kill the man she was looking at.

"Hold on, I had nothing to do with this. That gun was stolen from me three weeks ago and I even filed a report. I came home after drinks with a few of my girlfriends one Friday night to find the place ransacked. A few pieces of my jewelry were taken, cash from under my mattress and my Glock—which I keep in a safe. I…I don't even know who that guy is."

Goren jotted a few notes down on to his legal pad as reference for when he pulled the police report to see if what was in the statement matched what she had told him. He leaned over and whispered into Eames' ear that he would check it out while she finished the interview. Before he left, however, Eames got one more question in.

"Do the names Brandon Meyers or Beth McFadden seem familiar to you?"

Michelle snorted. "Beth McFadden. What does the skank sleeping with my fiancée have to do with this?"

Goren stopped from exiting the room and sat back down. He had remembered how defensive Beth had gotten when he had asked if she was having a sexual relationship with Brandon, and he thought he would get his answer through Michelle. Hearing the word _skank_ come from Michelle's mouth had made him shutter. Eames just looked over at Goren as if their suspicion of Beth being a department whore had just been answered.

"How do you know they're sleeping together?" Goren asked.

"I don't know if she still is." Michelle licked her lips. "But rumor has it she was sleeping with Chris before we got engaged. Some people have told me she was doing it to get to his stash of painkillers."

_Rumor has it. _ Goren knew he and Eames would be in for a long night of digging and fact checking. If there was anything he had learned over the course of his decades of experience of solving crimes was that women were known for not being so nice about each other's reputation when it came to one of three things: sex, money and simple dislike of one another.

"Why would Beth need or want your fiancée's painkillers?" Eames took control.

Shrugging her shoulders, Michelle filled the photo of Brandon over, no longer wishing to look at it. "I don't know. Apparently she developed an addiction. Chris told me that when he partnered with her, he saw her crush up Percocet's and put them in her coffee while they were on shift."

"Look, I know nothing about what happened, my gun was stolen from my house. I've answered enough questions for today, if you'd like to speak to me, you can call my lawyer."

Getting up, Michelle grabbed her belongings and headed out the door leaving the detectives with more questions than they had started with.

"It doesn't make sense."

Eames grabbed the files they had on the case as they headed back to their desks where she fired up her computer. Goren looked back over his notes knowing that his partner was intrigued to hear what he had to say.

"Let's say everything Michelle says is true; Beth is addicted to pharmaceuticals and from the amount of pills we found at Brandon's, it's safe to say he was too. If this was a drug deal gone badly, it's quite a coincidence that the gun used to kill Brandon happens to the same one which was stolen from someone who clearly doesn't like Beth."

"What are you thinking?" It took Eames by surprised by suddenly Goren seemed to be bottling a slightness of anger.

"I think the bullets that killed Brandon were meant for Beth. Michelle has the motive; Beth is having sex with her fiancée and she thought she could use Beth's addiction to point us in another direction and she could have ransacked her own house and reported her gun stolen to use that as a cover."

Eames looked through the file once again and found the toxicology report. Sure enough there had been a combination of drugs in Brandon's system that should have killed him regardless on getting shot. "But every drug that was in his system, he has a prescription for."

"And I when I was at Beth's apartment, she had prescription bottles lying all over the place. I don't think they were buying anything off the street."

Goren's train of thought had been put off track when out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure walk into the room. It was nearly ten at night; no one really had reason to be at One PP. Both he and Eames looked over to the right and saw a clearly intoxicated Beth McFadden leaning against a desk to keep her balance. Despite her eyes red and raw from the crying she had done while at the bar, Robert Goren was a hot blooded man and couldn't help but notice how beautiful she looked with her dark red hair pulled back into a low, tight bun. Getting up from their chairs, Eames rushed to Beth and grabbed her arms lightly.

Rapidly blinking, tears trickled from Beth's eyes and down her cheeks. Although her words were slurred, Eames could hear the lump in Beth's throat as she spoke. Her words were simple and easily understood.

"I'm ready to talk."


End file.
